


White Rabbit, Black Rabbit

by Wreybies



Category: Nightflyers (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dubious Consent, First Contact, M/M, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 06:35:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30000780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wreybies/pseuds/Wreybies
Summary: A conversation had within the headspace of a telepathically gifted young man and the scientist who needs his begrudging help.
Relationships: Karl D'Branin & Thale
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	White Rabbit, Black Rabbit

**Author's Note:**

> For those unfamiliar with the franchise, in this world, people gifted with meta-abilities are rated on a scale with respect to their powers. L1, L2, and L3, with L1's being the strongest, so strong they have to live in isolation chambers, else risk harming those around them. They are usually referred to with their power rating or sometimes they and their powers are called "teke".

“She’s not real, you know. Your daughter - she’s not here. She’s not anywhere, really,” Thale telepathically injected into Karl's head from the other end of the ship, his _teke_ avatar materializing in Karl's quarters. 

Thale’s voice was husky, a ring of gravel and ice orbiting his gravity well. That’s how Karl heard it. Or wanted to hear it. He wanted there to be a clear border between himself and the L1, an event horizon behind which the telepath existed, locked away, on the other side of the knowable. He could have his little ring of gravel and ice, so long as he remained on the other side of it.

“I know she’s a projection. The ship, Eris’ mother, she’s making it happen, making me see her. She’s using it to get to me,” said Karl.

One of the many curses to plague this mission was the anomaly of Captain Eris' mother - who had been captain before him - she was now a digital stowaway, her mind uploaded and taking refuge in the ship’s A.I. core. She’d been playing cruel games with him, showing him images of his dead daughter Skye. The images were like his memories. He could not touch or hold her, and when he chased her, she ran and disappeared.

“Yeah, right, mate. To get to _you_. It’s always about you, innit.” Thale’s disdain was razor-edged.

“It’s _not_ all about me.”

Thale tapped his temple to reiterate the futility of lying to a telepath of his power.

 _Smug little prick,_ thought Karl.

“Well, smug is free and hard to take away when you’re locked in a box all fucking day, _every_ day. You learn to hold on to what you can, but you should know all about that, right?” said Thale.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve got a pretty little thing waiting for you back on Earth, but you and Agatha’s make’n the beast with two backs. That’s what I mean, and it don’t take an L1 to know it.”

His affair with Agatha was hardly a secret, but: “Have you told anyone?”

“Why bother? Like I said, didn’t have to, bruv. Lots’o things you think is private is far from it. Like that probe - your little “white rabbit” - and what came back inside of it. Lommie ain’t the only one who saw what was in there when she ported in. I saw it too and I didn’t have to try. It came at me like a wall, like… like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Whatever it is - the Volcryn - we’re just cockroaches compared to it.”

“Them,” Karl corrected.

“It,” Thale retorted. “Trust me, mate. _It_.”

But none of that mattered anymore. Thale knew what had been within the probe, knew it through _teke_ , not through a data port.

“Show me,” Karl demanded.

“You ask like it’s ice cream after good sex. It certainly ain’t either of those. I can barely handle what’s in my head. Your head, sorry to say, is a much older model. Your processor ain’t up to the task.”

“Show me!” Karl bellowed.

Karl braced. He’d been in fights in his youth. Fistfights are never like you think. Your adrenaline is up, flooding you, muffling pain nerves. A punch is frightening the first time, but only the first time. Like a tattoo. Once you know the pain, once it’s an understood quantity, whether or not you choose to experience it again is about cost, not the unknown.

“Yeah, don’t be afraid, mate. Accept the price.” Thale looked up from under heavy brows. Blue eyes streaked red and gold.

“What?” Karl asked, confused.

“Something I heard in Lommie’s head. She’s a tough one, she is. Way more interesting than you. But I guess we’re about to change that, yeah? I’d tell you to hold on to your tits, but what’s the use?”

Thale’s face pinched in and his eyes blazed red, his teke powers coming online. No, it was nothing at all like a fist.

God pulled Karl’s head off and fucked him through the back hole.

“That’s a pretty picture. Skull-fucked by God. Didn’t take you for the metaphorical type, but I guess I should be flattered.” Thale’s voice was sound and shape and circular structures interlinked like soap bubbles. “Yeah, you’re a little wordsmith, Shakespeare,” Thale taunted. “The ladies must love that.”

Karl tried to answer wordlessly, with just his mind, his brain tripping on itself.

“Nah, mate. Don’t do that. Your kind has no talent for it and never will. Just talk out loud. I’ll read it just fine.”

“What… What did you mean… Accept the price?” Karl asked.

“You want what’s in my head; I want something back,” Thale spat.

“What? What do you want?”

The image of Thale in Karl’s mind - the one he knew existed only as an avatar in his head because Thale was, in fact, still in his enclosure in the cargo bay - it was just an image. He knew it. Just like the image of his daughter, and yet every fiber of his being said the man was standing right in front of him.

… now closer …

… and closer still …

_Those eyes. Christ, those fucking eyes…_

That practiced grin, the cocky lean, the gritty street-tough veneer, it was all too close, too _there_ , too everywhere. In his head, in his mind, a finger traced the shape of his bare chest without permission. Those eyes, deep and dark as space, hollow voids. Thale had seen it, heard his words: _event horizon… locked on the other side… nah mate, it’s you what’s all locked up…_

“Darling, why so coy?” Thale’s voice was the substructure of space-time, its granular texture rubbing against the ether. And his finger on Karl’s chest wasn’t done. Down in zigs, down in zags, nostrils flared, cold hands on his ghostly manhood.

“I didn’t think this was your…” Karl stammered.

“What, my _way_? My _nature_? You haven’t got a clue what nature even is, mate. You live in a world of lies wallpapering over what all of you really are, what you really mean. You say _hello_ and imagine fucking. You say _goodbye_ and imaging killing. You sit with your faces all sweet and charming while underneath, each and every one of you is a tragedy with a pulse.”

“If that’s what I am to you, then what can you want from me?”

Thale’s hand wasn’t cupping Karl’s cock and balls. No, it was deeper than that. He was plugged directly into Karl’s spinal cord, his brain, plugged into whatever gray matter gave life to sex and pleasure. Not the crude, ludicrous, dangling external equipment, but the internal programming, the code, which, stripped of the arbitrary connections and peripherals of flesh, became clear, bright, numerical, nearly the same programming regardless of what you did or didn’t have between…

“I’m not Lommie, sunshine. This isn’t some data-stream or a hard rive, though I can feel you getting _hard_ , getting _driven_. See? I can play with words too. And yeah, you’ve no idea how boring it is to watch you all go about as if tits and cocks have any meaning. All that investment in _men are from Mars and women are from Venus_. More like Uranus, the whole sodding lot of you.”

“You’re not funny,” said Karl. “And clearly no one’s ever spoken to you about consent.”

“Yeah, I been told that,” Thale responded. “Good thing comedian isn’t my job, but maybe it should be yours. That’s a knee-slapper about consent, innit? Especially you, broadcasting your thoughts like a fuck’n beacon. No wonder the Volcryn picked up on you, Karl. _You_ in particular. No wonder that’s your blood and meat and teeth in that probe. That message to your wife, the one on a constant loop in your head about letting her _release_ you, did you send it before or after you started in on Agatha’s goodie-bag? Don’t bother lying. I can see everything, poppet.”

The room vanished. They hung in blackness. No, not blackness. At the furthest extent of what he knew _wasn’t_ his vision he could see mottled colors. Deep niobium blues, purples, and greens.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“I keep my word, mate. L’s are shitty liars because we’re open books to one another. No chance to practice like you lot, day in, day out, lying like it was a fucking sport. You wanted this and you’re gonna get it. Well, just the beginning. You should be able to handle that much without popping.”

The colors rushed in and the scale of things took shape and form. All of this had been at the farthest reaches of the Volcryn past. It was the beginning. Not _its_ beginning - _the_ beginning.

“Hope you’re not the church-going type. There ain’t no gods and there ain’t no heaven or hell. There’s just space - endless space - and we’re the squishy things that live in a drop of dirty water. The Volcryn, that’s what’s looking down at us through the microscope.”

A reverberating snap rippled through him, pulling electrons from neutrons from quarks and stretching the nothingness between all three. It collapsed and rebounded. It caught them both like a wave at the beach heading for shore. A big wave. A tsunami and they were the sand.

“Fuck me,” whispered Karl in amazement

“Thought you’d never ask,” came Thale’s whispered, smokey, sultry reply.

As neutrinos slip through matter unhindered, so too did Thale slip through the essence of Karl. Nothing touched but everything sang, plucked like notes on a harp.

The pure smugness that rolled off Thale was replaced with determination. Karl read Thale as Thale seemed to be reading Karl and there was a whisper of validation that was in need of satisfying. Thale wanted so badly to impress, to shock, to frighten, and scandalize.

_Why?_

“I’m not scared of you,” said Karl.

In a bed made of nebulae, Thale brushed his face, a thumb that was a comet slid down Karl’s neck to his collar bone, to his chest, to his nipple and pinched ever so slightly, turning hydrogen into helium.

“You should be,” Thale exhaled breath into his ear made of solar wind and dust.

_Fuck it._

Karl was done with the juvenility, this pointless, formless, infantile lust that lacked any discipline or experience to give it meaning or purpose. He remembered all too well what it was like to fumble with someone else’s body, no clue what to do, eagerness threatening to end the moment prematurely. Karl lifted celestial hands and pulled Thale into him, crushing him against his lips that were not lips, the heat of their stomachs ripping through the dark matter that gives galaxies their weight and mass.

Karl breathed frozen methane from Thale’s lungs.

A whine peeled in from the blackness. It rose and rose and became the worst tinnitus Karl had ever experienced. It careened past the audible, out from his ears and into his bones, his marrow, a vibration that set the universe to trembling.

It was Thale’s fear.

“You wanted this,” Karl said, turnabout being fair play. “So you’re getting it.”

“Wait, man…” Thale pulled back.

“No, no waiting,” Karl pressed on. “I’m tired of coddling you. I’m sick to death of your stupid smile and the license you take with everything and everyone. You wanna fuck me? Fine. Have at it. Let’s see what you got. You think you’ve had it bad, okay, you have. I admit it. I can see it. You’re just as much a tragic mess as the rest of us.”

Thale crystalized in Karl’s arms, becoming real and tangible. Stars, nebulae, and galaxies faded and through the veil, Karl saw Thale’s face, his real face, young and alarmed.

“Bite off more than you could chew?” asked Karl.

Thale’s lips squirreled up and ran through numerous blends of emotion. Something stuck and his eyes flicked back to Karl.

“If you do this, Agatha’s going to see it.”

“Should have thought of that before, Thale. She’s going to see it regardless. From you.”

“Yeah, but your hands are clean right now.”

“No one has clean hands. No one. I would have thought with your unique insight that would be something you realized long ago.”

Karl pulled the man’s shirt off, not the real one in Thale’s container, but the one in his mind. He was as pale as marble, the blue network of his veins showing in some areas. He had scars, many scars. Some looked medical, others were certainly not. And he was surprisingly soft. Not infirm, or grown fat, but his was a body that had never known physical exercise. It wouldn’t have, not in that box of his.

He was young. So young. Not measured in years that said he was a man, but in experience that said he wasn’t. Not by birthdays, but in the number of people who had touched him, which were so painfully few, most of them having been responsible for the scars.

Who had held this man? No one.

Who had touched him without causing pain, without abusing him in other ways? No one.

Agatha, perhaps. But even she had remained at his outer edge, on the other side of the event horizon he’d imagined.

“Don’t need your fucking pity,” said Thale, soaked in resentment.

“Acknowledgment and realization are not pity,” Karl said. His hand came to the side of Thale’s face. Thale took it violently, held it, refused to give way.

Karl acknowledged that his hand and Thale’s hand were _not_ hands. The strength with which Thale held him was not the result of musculature. This was all a matter of mind.

“It don’t matter if you mind because your mind don’t matter,” Thale retorted.

“Is that what you think, that I don’t matter? Or maybe you’re worried that _you_ don’t matter.”

“I matter enough for you to have brought me on this suicide mission.”

“Agreed,” said Karl. “So why the constant attack, the never-ending aggression?”

“Because I’m just a fucking tool to you. A communications device for your precious aliens. You ain’t no different than the ones who did this to me!” He gestured at the scars that laced the skin on this chest. “You ain’t got no scalpel, but it’s the same. I ain’t a person to you. Not to any of you. Your probe came back stuffed with your meat inside - your _fucking_ meat, mate - and you still want me as a microphone. Think whatever you want, but the real idiot here is obvious.”

And the kid had a point. Maybe all the childishly lewd psychic groping was just to mask his fear. And if he was being honest, Thale hadn’t attempted to hide it. He’d said it more than once, but Karl had been too distracted by his own concerns and his own fear of the L1’s infamous powers.

“Why won’t you show me the Volcryn?” Karl asked.

“I told you, it’s not for you. That’s not a dig, just the truth. You’ll fry. They sent you that probe with your guts inside it. What other answer do you need, man?”

“The one that’s in your head. That probe means nothing. There’s no way to know what they mean by that, what they’re trying to say. We have no common footing for communication… other than you,” Karl admitted. “You have my consent, even though you never asked for it. If you still want this from me, you can have it, and I’ll give it willingly, but I need to know what you know, what you’ve seen. We’re all tools. All of us. Every person on this ship understood that we are all expendable. The stakes are that high. If you’re a screwdriver then I’m a wrench, and nothing more.”

And Karl let Thale see the truth of it in his head. The mission, his wife at home who had deleted the memory of their lost daughter and was contemplating erasing the memory of him as well. This cursed ship and all its problems. And yes, Thale too. A last panicked Hail Mary to stave off destruction.”

“That’s bleak, mate,” Thale said softly.

Karl’s mental hand was still held in Thale’s, but the ferocity was gone. Karl squeezed gently. Skye was dead, and the hole she’d left in his soul was a singularity consuming everything that came too close. He would never hold her again. Ever. No one would, and the center of his chest collapsed in pain, the singularity threatening to take him.

“Least she had you to love her when she was here,” said Thale, and there was no irony in his voice, no taunt, just an edge of regret and envy.

And with that admission, the answer was illuminated. Even L’s were not immune to the art of self-deception. Thale didn’t need or want a fuck, mental or otherwise. That could be had at any time from almost anyone. What he wanted from Karl - what he needed - was so much simpler, and so much more complex.

Thale’s glowing eyes darted about, seeing the culmination of Karl’s thoughts, the way they coalesced into the gift he would give. He’d never looked more like a boy in Karl’s eyes.

It was slow because Karl was inexperienced in these realms where Thale reigned supreme, and even in the physical world of normal matter, it was not a thing with which he had much practice. He pulled Thale in, closer, wrapping non-existent arms around him, embracing him, holding him, as he would have held Skye to comfort her, as he had on so many occasions and never would again. No one had ever done this for Thale. Not even Agatha who feared him and his sly tricks. No one had dared to acknowledge that beneath the powers, beneath the cheek and vulgarity, beneath the anger and frustration and the danger he presented, there was a young man who had never had the chance to even be just a child, like any other child.

Like Skye.

But Thale was a pilar of cold, unmoving steel. “This ain’t what I wanted.”

“Yes, it is,” replied Karl. “You know it is.”

Long moments passed. Karl remained resolute and held fast. He felt an exhalation and Thale’s head dropped to Karl’s shoulder, his arms came around in reluctant reciprocation. Karl stroked the back of Thale’s head, and, like a cat, Thale nuzzled further into the innocent embrace.

There was no knowing how long they remained there in the space between minds. Perhaps hours, perhaps only seconds. Thale had softened into Karl’s offer of intimacy, though it was so different from how things started. He even kissed Karl gently upon the neck, but nothing more, a silent thank-you.

“I’m going to show you, Karl,” he said. “Brace, if you can.”


End file.
